Democratic Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro notified Tioga Borough President Steve Hazlett that the borough violated a state law because it failed to conduct a background check on Timothy Loehmann to be its police officer, the Washington Post reports.
In 2014, while on duty as a Cleveland police officer, Loehmann jumped out of a patrol car before it had stopped and shot Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old boy who was playing with a toy gun in a park. Although Loehmann was criminally cleared of any wrongdoing, he was fired from the Cleveland Police Department because in the aftermath of the killing, the media discovered a history of claims against Loehmann for excess use of force when he was a cop in another jurisdiction; Loehmann was fired for lying on his job application.
Shapiro noted Tioga violated the state’s Act 57, a regulation enacted after the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, that requires jurisdictions to run a background check on all law enforcement applicants before they’re offered a job to ensure they weren’t fired for disciplinary reasons from another police force.